An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that flies without a human crew onboard. UAVs may be operated remotely by humans or may be capable of autonomous operation. Conventionally, UAVs are not provided with a secure communications management capability. However, communications between the ground-based control systems and the UAV are of extreme importance to achieve the mission goals. In this scenario, continuous network connectivity cannot be assured. In addition, communication may need to be established over heterogeneous networks handling one or more communication paths or data links.
During a mission, the UAV sends/receives data to/from the ground control using different data links with diverse radio frequencies, broad bands, and types of communications systems. The UAV also uses communications standards like TCP/IP. In this regard, the existence of multiple and diverse aerial platforms, multiple specific functional payloads and mission's types may cause vulnerability. Third parties may compromise communication between the UAV and the ground control and potentially gain control of the UAV by hacking the data link. Thus the Ground Control communication data link, in this case, the Command and Control messages (C2 messages) and also the data exchanged (uplinked or downlinked) can be a specific target of a cyber-attack. Generally, threats may be related to spoofing, hijacking and jamming (insertion of noise into the communication channel).
Current mitigation threat techniques require complex and expensive electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems onboard. There are techniques for countering spoofing based on discrimination signal using amplitude signal, time-of-arrival, consistency, polarization or difference on angle-of-arrival. They provide some degree of mitigation when the data link is unique. However as explained above, an UAV typically uses many data links. Furthermore a mission normally involves one or many events that may disrupt data links, and often requires a change among data links. Such diversity of data links during a mission is an important factor in reducing efficacy of countermeasures.